Three Weeks With My Brother

by Nicholas Sparks

  “Oh, thank God,” Micah said with a long sigh. He smiled.

  “You got that right,” I agreed. “That was close.”

  Of course, at that age—and in that particular moment—we weren’t able to fathom how the worker might view this particular incident. Unlike us, he wasn’t thankful at all. One minute, he’s doing his job, and the next minute, he’s nearly impaled by an arrow, launched by two kids at the top of the hill. No, he wasn’t thankful, not even a little bit. He was ENRAGED! Even from two hundred yards, we saw him raise his eyes toward us, toss his shovel aside, and start racing for his truck.

  “You think we oughta run?” I asked, turning to Micah.

  But Micah was already gone, racing back toward our street, his legs moving as fast as I’d ever seen them.

  I ran after him; thirty seconds later, as I was chugging across neighbors’ lawns, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the truck come to a screeching halt at the edge of the woods, saw the man jump from the truck and start chasing us the rest of the way on foot.

  Oh, he caught us all right, and he was even madder up close than he was far away. When my dad learned what happened, he was mad, too, and we were grounded for a couple of weeks. Even worse, later that afternoon, the sheriff came and confiscated our bows and arrows.

  With the exception of the one trip to the Grand Canyon, our vacations would be spent with relatives in San Diego.

  For whatever reason, the majority of both my mother’s and father’s family had moved there, and consequently, we were able to visit them and enjoy the beach without having to spend much money. A good thing, I might add, for a family that didn’t have any to spare.

  We would always drive the ten hours it took to get there, the three of us crammed into the back of the Volkswagen van, along with Brandy (our Doberman) and assorted luggage. Though we would stop for gas twice in those ten hours, we never bought food or drinks; instead, our meals consisted of ham sandwiches, Fritos, and pink lemonade that my mom had brought from home.

  Those were grand times. Our parents never required us to wear seat belts (are you really surprised by that revelation?), and we’d read, play games, or wrestle in the back as we zipped down Highway 5, heading for grandma Sparks’s house. I don’t mean the kind of wrestling where we’d poke each other and whine; I mean real wrestling complete with headlocks, punches, twisted arms and legs, and punctuated with screams and tears. Usually, my parents would ignore it for a while, but sometimes it got to the point that dad would finally look over his shoulder and scream at us to “Stop shaking the G-D-N van!” thereby initiating the inevitable DEFCON countdown, which we never seemed able to avoid. And, of course, we’d stare at our father as if he had cornstalks growing out of his ears, wondering what on earth could have possibly upset him.

  “It was your fault,” Micah would hiss. “You shouldn’t have cried.”

  “But you were hurting me,” I’d say.

  “You need to learn to be tougher.”

  “You were twisting my ear! I thought you were ripping it off!”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What’d you call me?”

  “He called you an idiot,” Dana would helpfully add.

  Micah would glower. “I’ll show you who the idiot is . . .”

  At which point, the wrestling would begin again. I often tell people that we never actually drove to San Diego; for the most part, the van sort of hopped there.

  We were also “country comes to town” when it came to visiting with our cousins. Their families tended to be better off financially than we were, and as soon as we arrived we’d go blasting through the door toward the cousins’ bedroom. Beyond the door, we knew, was Nirvana itself and we’d simply stare for a moment in wonder, little tears welling in the corners of our eyes. They had more toys than we’d ever seen, and we quickly made good use of them.

  “Hey what’s this?” we’d ask, grabbing something. Soon we’d be wiggling pieces, trying to figure it out.

  “It’s the new, battery-operated construction crane,” my cousin would proudly exclaim. “It can assemble entire houses from scratch—”

  Snap.

  The cousin would freeze in horror at the sight of the toy in two pieces.

  “What happened?” we’d ask.

  “You . . . you . . . broke it,” he’d whimper.

  “Oh, sorry about that. Hey . . . what’s this one do?”

  “It’s the new electronically enhanced remote control car, complete with—”

  Snap.

  “Oh, sorry,” we’d say again. “Hey, what’s this . . .”

  Once the toys were broken (we always wondered how so many accidents could happen in such a short time), we’d try to play with our cousins. Not that they viewed it as playing. We did nothing with them that we didn’t do back home—to us, it was regular fun—but to them, it bordered on merciless torture. None of them, it seemed, had lived a childhood like ours, i.e., one without real rules. We thought it great fun, for instance, rolling the little ones up in area rugs until they were pinned and suffocated, unable to move. Then my brother and I would take turns launching ourselves from the couch onto the soft bulge where their bodies were and screaming, “Bingo!” whenever we really crunched them. Or, we might dunk them in the pool—really dunk them, for a long, long time—until they nearly passed out. Sometimes, we’d try to teach our cousins how to punch hard, demonstrating on their little arms.

  “No, not like that. Cock your arm waaay back, and really use the knuckle. Like this . . .”

  POW!

  If there was one thing wrong with visiting my cousins—and it pains me to admit it, since they’re family—it’s that they were whiners. They cried all the time when we were around. It’s a wonder how their parents ever dealt with it.

  Anyway, the visit would eventually come to an end and it would be time to leave. We’d head to the van, and we’d turn around to see our cousins ghost-white and trembling as they waved good-bye to us, their little arms covered in bruises.

  “See you next year!” we’d call out.

  Later, on the way back to grandma’s, my brother would ask, “What were they doing with their faces when we left?”

  “You mean the way they were blinking, and squinching, and tilting suddenly to the side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Must be a facial tic of some sort.”

  Micah would shake his head. “Those poor kids. They weren’t like that when we got there. Must have come on suddenly.”

  The trips themselves were always an adventure, too. Once, when we took off for San Diego, my father had $21 in his wallet. That was it—the entire sum he’d brought for the family for an entire week’s vacation. As fate would have it, the van broke down in the Tehachapi Mountains, about an hour north of Los Angeles. We were towed to the only service station nearby, where we learned that the van had an oil leak. The part would take at least a week to arrive, but the mechanic thought he could weld something together overnight that might allow us to reach our destination. Of course, it would cost money, something my dad didn’t have.

  My dad had a funny, almost contradictory, relationship with money. Oh, I suppose that he wanted more of it, but when push came to shove, he had no idea about how to go about earning more. At the same time, he never wanted to think about money, but, because of our family’s situation, was always forced to do so. Everything had to be budgeted, and this breakdown was not in the budget. To say he was angry was an understatement; he was downright scary: He totally bypassed the DEFCON countdown and went straight to Nuclear Launch. He called his mom in San Diego, who promised to wire him the money needed for repairs, but the repairs wouldn’t be completed until the following day. He spent the day pacing back and forth, whistling the tune of the dead, his tongue curled out of his mouth.

  Later that afternoon, we ate the last of the ham sandwiches and Fritos and finished the lemonade, further enraging my
father. Without money to buy food, or even stay in a hotel, we ended up sleeping in the back of the van with the dog that night. When we woke, there was no money for breakfast either; we wouldn’t eat until we reached San Diego the following afternoon.

  Still, that wasn’t the worst part about our stay. Nor was it our dad’s anger. When I think about that particular trip, my memories always drift back to the first day, an hour or so after we’d arrived at the garage.

  As I said, my father was beyond furious at that time, and we’d learned to keep our distance in moments like those. With nothing else to do, my brother, sister, and I decided to see what the town had to offer, but quickly learned that there wasn’t much. The place was more a run-down rest stop than an actual town. It was hot as blazes with only a handful of decrepit buildings lining the highway in either direction, and not a stitch of shade. There wasn’t even a coffee shop or diner with a television perched in the corner that might help pass the time.

  It was one of the first times we’d actually been bored. Thankfully, we soon came across a dog who seemed to enjoy our attention. We spent a few minutes petting him—he was incredibly friendly, bouncy, and happy—and we took to calling him Sparky (after us, of course). In time he scrambled to his feet and we watched him begin to trot away, tongue hanging out, looking pleased as punch. He glanced back at us, almost smiling, I still believe, and headed toward the road, where he was instantly struck by a car going sixty miles an hour.

  We witnessed every detail. We heard the thump and watched the dog twist unnaturally before careening toward us, blood flying from his mouth, and skidding to a stop less than a couple of feet away. The car simply slowed; it didn’t stop. The family in the car looked as horrified as we were. A moment later, after whining and whimpering and heaving a final breath, Sparky died at our feet. With my dad in such a foul mood, and my mom trying to keep him calm, all we could do was handle the latest horror the way we always had: with each other, as siblings. Just three little kids on the side of a highway, holding each other and crying, trying to understand why terrible things happened.

  CHAPTER 8

  Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Peru

  January 27–28

  After our brief stop in Lima, we prepared to travel to Cuzco, the oldest permanent settlement in the Western Hemisphere, and the former capital of the Inca empire. With a population of 275,000, it’s a city resplendent with adobe houses, red-tiled roofs, winding cobblestone streets, magnificent cathedrals, and open markets, and as we flew over the city, both Micah and I were struck by its beauty.

  On the flight, we were warned about altitude sickness. Nestled in the Andes, Cuzco is situated at 11,500 feet, and we were told to move slowly as we exited the plane. Members of the TCS crew stood in various sections of the terminal, repeating their warnings over and over as our group filed past.

  “Take it easy. Don’t get out of breath. Go slooooow.”

  “You’d think we were climbing Mount Everest,” Micah whispered, “not walking through an airport.”

  I nodded, agreeing that the whole thing was ridiculous. Maybe some of the people might be affected, but we were young and in relatively good shape. Ignoring their warnings, we walked at our normal pace and ended up having to wait quite a while for everyone else to arrive at the buses.

  While we were waiting, however, a concerned look crossed Micah’s face. He took a couple of deep breaths.

  “You know, I think I can actually feel it,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “A little bit. It kind of makes me feel . . . fuzzy.”

  In the end, it made us both feel really fuzzy, like we’d had a few too many beers. For whatever reason, we started giggling and couldn’t stop. Everything struck us as outrageously funny as we rode on the bus; the clothes people were wearing, the bumpy, cobblestone roads that made our voices vibrate, and especially the name of the place we were just about to visit: Sacsayhuaman.

  When pronounced correctly—Socksy Voomun—it sounded like someone with a Russian accent trying to say, “Sexy Woman.” In our addled state, we couldn’t drop the subject. It was all we could talk about.

  “I just can’t vait until vee see zee socksy voomun,” Micah would say, and my oxygen-starved brain would make me double over in laughter.

  “I vonder where zee socksy voomun is,” he’d add. “You know I love nussing more zan a socksy voomun.”

  “Please . . . just quit, okay?” I’d plead.

  “I veally, veally, veally vant to climb on a socksy voomun. You know Peru is famous for zee socksy voomum.”

  By then, I had tears in my eyes.

  We had lunch at our hotel in Cuzco. Once a monastery, it was one of the most interesting hotels we would visit. Like Casa Aliaga, it was designed around a center courtyard, albeit on a much grander scale. Originally built in 1640, the rooms had been modified to allow oxygen to be pumped in. As Micah observed when he entered the lobby:

  “Zis is even better zan a socksy voomun.”

  In the afternoon, after the giggles had subsided, we finally got a chance to visit the Incan fortress. It wasn’t exactly what we expected. Situated on a large, open plateau just above Cuzco, it was ringed by rock walls on either side, more like an amphitheater than a defensive fort. The walls had been formed using giant blocks of granite, and the stones had been so precisely cut and stacked that, even today, it’s impossible to slip a piece of paper between them.

  Above us, heavy clouds lent the landscape an ominous appearance. We wandered the area with Bob and Kate Devlin, who had rapidly become good friends. As we listened to the guide talking about the intricate stone construction, they informed us they’d recently celebrated their forty-first anniversary. A little while later, while Micah and I were exploring on our own, we saw Bob and Kate standing together in the distance. For a while, we simply watched them.

  “They look happy, don’t they?” Micah asked.

  “Yeah, they do. I think that’s because they really are happy.”

  “Forty years is a long time. They’ve been married longer than I’ve been alive.”

  “So have a lot of people on this trip.”

  “What do you think the secret of a long-lasting marriage is?” Micah asked.

  “I don’t know if there’s a secret. Every couple is different. What works for one might not work for another.”

  “I know. But if you could pick one thing, what would it be?”

  I hesitated. Above me, the sky was charcoal; clouds were rolling and shifting, changing shape by the minute.

  “Commitment,” I finally said. “Both people have to be committed. I think if two people are committed to the marriage, if they really want to make it work, then they’ll find a way to do it. No matter what happens in life. If you marry someone who isn’t committed—or if you’re not committed—and something goes wrong, the marriage won’t make it. Marriage is hard.”

  “Hmm,” is all Micah said.

  “How about you? What do you think the secret is?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve only been married four years. But for me and Christine, I think it’s communication. When we talk about issues and really open up to each other, things are great between us. When we keep things to ourselves, grudges and resentments build up and we end up arguing.”

  I said nothing.

  “What? You don’t think communication is important?”

  I shrugged. “What good is talking if neither of you are really committed? If one of you had an affair or got addicted to drugs or was abusive, simply talking about it wouldn’t take the hurt away. Or fix the trust that’s been lost. In the end, marriage comes down to actions. I think people talk too much about the things that bother them, instead of actually doing the little things that keep a marriage strong. You have to know what your spouse needs from you, and then you do it. And you avoid doing the things that harm the relationship. If your spouse acts the same way, your marriage can make it through anything.”

  He smiled. “Like you and Cat?” />
  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Like me and Cat.”

  After the fortress of Sacsayhuaman, we headed back to tour the main cathedral of Cuzco, where the wealth was enough to stagger the imagination. Larger than St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the cathedral was home to hundreds of frescoes and oil paintings of religious figures, while gold and silver glittered everywhere. Not only were the massive altars plated in precious metals, but entire walls as well. When one considers that the Spanish sent the vast majority of the wealth back to Spain, it was easy to understand why Pizarro had been so intent on conquering the Incas.

  As fascinating as the church was, Micah seemed fixated on a particular item. With effort, he got the guide’s attention.

  “Um, where’s the painting of Jesus eating the guinea pig?” Micah asked.

  Guinea pigs, we learned, aren’t regarded as pets in Peru. Instead, they’re regarded as a delicacy, and are roasted for celebratory occasions. When the early Spanish missionaries were working to convert the Incas to Catholicism, they’d had to blend the religion with local culture as a way to make it more palatable to the natives. Thus when the missionaries commissioned a painting of the Last Supper, one has to wonder whether they were surprised by what the artist assumed Jesus had eaten.

  We soon found ourselves staring up at the painting of Jesus surrounded by his disciples. In addition to the bread and the wine, there on the platter in front of him was a roasted guinea pig.

  As we were staring at it, Micah leaned over to me.

  “Did you know Alli’s classroom has a guinea pig for a pet?”

  “She does?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s going to love this.”

  Micah surreptitiously snapped a photograph.

  Museums.

  Everywhere we went, we were taken to museums, so we could see the artifacts representing the history of the native peoples. In all honesty, many were quite boring. We learned, for instance, that nearly every culture in the past had—surprise!—pottery; consequently we spent a lot of time looking at jars and bowls. No matter how you sliced it, after a while this was about as exciting as looking at jars and bowls in your own kitchen cupboard. Yet our guides loved jars and bowls. It seemed like they could talk about jars and bowls for hours. They spoke with reverence about jars and bowls.